This weekend I was quietly sitting sandwiched between Gertrude and Matilda watching the beginning of a silly, teenie-bopper movie called What a Girl Wants. Gertrude wasn’t really watching. Nor was she really sitting willingly. I sort of had her in an iron grip backwards hug so that Mom could get ready for her Grandma’s birthday party without having a toddler question her bra choice.
After watching an extended prologue that explains that the femme hero’s father is some hoity toity nobleman living in London, though she’s never met him, and her mother is a free-spirit, trashed-up wedding band trollop. Femme hero longs for a father figure in her life and, despite the evident squalor the family is living in, she picks up and heads off for London. The next two hours are spent with her waiting in line to make it through airport security and, hopefully, make her plane.
Actually she apparently teleports straight from her non-descript, sunny, California town straight to the top of a double decker bus trolling the streets of London, while she looks out like Mary Tyler Moore shortly after discovering club drugs. (I’m making fun, but I was actually enjoying the movie.)
It was at this point that cognitive dissonance hit (coupled with Gertrude drooling on my arm). After seeing a picturesque view of the Tower of London (as picturesque as any place were executions occurred can be, I suppose) I notice some familiar shunted guitar chords, backed by driving drums and one hell of a bass line. Then:
London calling to the faraway towns
Now that war is declared-and battle come down
London calling to the underworld
Come out of the cupboard, all you boys and girls
London calling, now don't look at us
All that phoney Beatlemania has bitten the dust
London calling, see we ain't got no swing
'Cept for the ring of that truncheon thing
Of course, I thought to myself, why not use this song to really sell the idea of visiting London. My favorite part of this upbeat travelogue:
London calling to the imitation zone
Forget it, brother, an' go it alone
London calling upon the zombies of death
Quit holding out-and draw another breath
London calling-and I don't wanna shout
But when we were talking-I saw you nodding out
London calling, see we ain't got no highs
Except for that one with the yellowy eyes
That’s what I love about the Clash. The way they could paint a beautiful picture of violets and daffodils. Quiet, ambling streets, relaxing tea, and people with yellowy eyes. And never political! No, the Clash always tended toward a bubblegum punk. Those cheeky gents.
This has always been one of my favorite Clash songs. But I never expected to hear it during a happy moment in the midst of a sugary pre-teen fantasy (you know the preteen fantasy, that your long lost dad is really a powerful and rich English Lord from whom you learn a measure of maturity while you teach him to be spontaneous and, hopefully, to love your mom again). To their credit, they didn’t edit the song to be a peppy shout out to London. They left it in tact. But still. It was a shock, to say the least.
It makes you think, however. Look at your grandma. These days, as she’s going through the winter of her life, she probably spends her time listening to the music of her youth. Maybe it’s Edith Pilaf. Perhaps Vera Lynn. Vaughan Monroe, Bing Crosby, or, in my wife’s grandma’s case, King of the Polka, Frankie Yankovic and his Yanks.
My point is that the elderly listen to age-appropriate music. They drop the needle on their aging turntable and listen to the music of their youth.
Flash forward thirty years when my brother will be 80. He’s sitting in his rocking chair, with a blanket over his legs. He gets up slowly in his dusty home and pulls out a disc, placing it in the tray and presses play. On the cover of the CD his grandchildren swear they see four men standing in front a strangely stained concrete obelisk, zipping up their pants. But surely that’s not possible. Out of the high-quality speakers you hear the opening, synthetic strains of “Baba O’Reilly.” They roll their eyes with each pronouncement of a “teenage wasteland”.
This same scene could happen with “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, or “Purple Haze”. Down the hall it may be “Anarchy in the U.K.” or, more appropriately, the soothing, dulcet tones of “I Wanna Be Sedated”.
What the kids will hear in the music of my brother’s generation, and to a lesser extent, mine, will be a freedom. A sense of joy at breaking out of the bonds set upon you and just . . . rocking. The music of their parents’ generation will be marred by the attempt to shock and one-up. Sure, this occurred in all stages of popular music, but it was never an embedded industry standard (see Nelly, Marilyn Manson, Dr. Dre, Eminem). This is not to say the music may not be worthy. If there is a message, it’s being obscured by the shock. But for the most part the message and the sense of joy and freedom you got from the first and middle stages of rock have been replaced by a preening mastership of the grotesque and vulgar.
I won’t deny my own enjoyment of those two on a semi-regular basis. However, compare the rude freedom of Buddy Holly’s “Rave On” or the Beatles’ version of “Bad Boy” with the craven dankness of Marilyn Manson’s “Disposable Teens”.
One is the sound of a youth revolution getting off the ground, the other the sound of a calculated image machine bent on pissing off parents.
A good youth revolution does that on principle. Not on purpose.
Viva La Revolution!
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